Careful folks, I ran into a big issue renaming a test project! After the rename, I get the following error...

A team project mapped in your workspace '***;Username' has been renamed. The version of the client you're using doesn't support reacting to a team project rename within a local workspace. To continue using this workspace, you can upgrade to Visual Studio 2015 (RC), or you can get the latest update for Visual Studio 2013. If you can't update your client or are using Visual Studio 2012, then you can shelve your changes, create a new workspace and then unshelve your changes. See renaming a team project for more details: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p?LinkId=528893

I'm on VS2013, didn't realize there was an update but after this error, I found an update that's purportedly the newest (2013.4) but that didn't fix my issue. Did some research and actually found a newer version (2013.5) but that still didn't fix it! Still trying to figure out how to fix this issue but want to warn others.

The rename dialog shown (vsalmdocs.azurewebsites.net/.../ProjectRename1.png) doesn't give the user ANY indication that what they could be doing could cause catastrophic damage to the TFS environment*.

*If someone does rename a team project how can we audit who did it and when? As much as I want the rename feature, is there anyway to restrict which Team Project administrators can rename team projects?

Here are my fears (from the documentation):

*"If you don't restart the client, then operations that use the cached team project name will fail." Failures for users are terrible and we can't take TFS offline for the entire engineering group, for a simple rename, does the rename invalidate the cache on the clients and refresh, or give the user ANY indication that a rename just took place?

*"After you restart Microsoft Test Manager, in RC, cancel the "Connecting to your team project..." dialog box and then connect to the renamed team project. This is due to Microsoft Test Manger holding onto the old project rename even after restart." Even AFTER restart, YIKES! Will this improve in the final release or will our help desk get continued calls and have to tell our test engineers to cancel?

*"Any additional clients which use the .NET Team Foundation Server Client Object Model" What about the TFS Power Tools and the shell extensions, if someone is doing a checkin midway through and a rename takes place, what happens to the check-in and the engineers workspace? What about SQL Server Mangement Studio (we still have sqk devs that have to stay on SQL 2008 for SSIS development)? What about MSSCCI for visual studio 6 development?

* "Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 (RC or newer)" We have clients with 2010, 12, 13, 15, but we don't have an update 5, is update 5 required, how do we get update 5?

*"Some build definitions do not pick up the new team project name to use when pulling sources. In these cases the team project name will need to be manually updated." Some? All of our build definitions (hundreds of them) use custom assemblies, so will ALL of our builds break? Yikes, please tell me this will be fixed for release. Is there any automated way to fix all of the build definitions? This seems like a SHOW STOPPER to be able to allow anyone to rename a team project. Manual??? Can you provide any tooling? Is there any guidance about what we need to fix and how we can fix it so that the next rename won’t break our build definitions?

*"Unlike work item queries, query-based test suites are stored differently and can't update the team project name after rename. " Um....we have thousands of query-based test suites, you can't go breaking ALL of our query based suites by renaming a team project, again this seems like a complete SHOW STOPPER. Manual??? Can you provide any tooling?

*“If your team uses SharePoint Integration that has custom queries or web parts, update explicit references to the team project name in those custom queries and web parts.” You CANNOT just go breaking countless queries and web parts without given us a heads up about which queries and web parts are going to be broken. We rely heavily on SharePoint and have developed custom web parts and SharePoint dashboards…so if they are going to be broken is there any tooling or guidance about what we need to fix and how we can fix it so that the next rename won’t break our web parts and dashboards?

*” Yes, any default artifacts created in the team project get renamed along with the project if they share the same name as the team project. This includes artifacts such as the default team, team room, and Git repository (in RTM). Renames of these artifacts are done as a best effort.” Best effort seems like a HUGE copout. How can we check that ALL of the artifacts are renamed successfully and completely” What does best effort mean, what if it fails on say work item charts…speaking of work item charts what happens to the graphs of the charts after a rename?

* “Why can't I open queries saved to disk after a rename” 1) I didn’t know I couldn’t…thank you for telling me, AFTER the fact? What else won't I be able to do AFTER I rename a team project?

“You will not be able to open them after a team project is renamed. You can use Visual Studio 2012 or newer to open them.” So I have to use 2012, why, any update required? We have third party tooling that creates custom queries…how do we need to update that code to handle renames?

After a rename of a test project I cannot open anymore other TFS projects because I obtain the error:
"A team project mapped in your workspace '***' has been renamed. The version of the client you're using doesn't support reacting to a team project rename within a local workspace. To continue using this workspace, you can upgrade to Visual Studio 2015 (RC) or you can get the latest update for Visual Studio 2013..." I installed the Update 5 CTP for VS2013 and Visual Studio 2015 Preview (is it the same of RC?) but I cannot access to the workspace.

I don't know if anyone has tried the TFS integration tool, but you can change the name of a project using this tool. The only thing to be aware of is if you have any files in source control that are deleted, you need to either undelete them or permanently delete them before processing the project. To rename the project just setup a new project, delete the build files in source control and then reintegrate the old project into the new one with the new name. Hope this helps.

Jarkkow I like your list, alot. It's taken Microsoft 10 years to get to this feature. Been broken and reported on connect.microsoft.com since TFS 2005. Surely Brian Harry will ensure that the feature will be complete, work seamlessly, and be easy to use. I really like your suggestion that renaming a team project should NOT require down time...it should be like live migration in HyperV where the VM never goes down...and when renaming a team project I shouldn't have to tell every dev to stop what they are doing....disable all builds, stop project managers from updating workitems, etc. TFS should just seamlessly handle the rename and let clients continue to work and when it's complete and the new name is in place...just refresh the client with the new name. Oh and, please for the love of god...MS don't make me change any settings on our MOSS server...that process takes weeks from our internal IT group. Again just handle it nicely and the 10 year wait will have been worth it.

Nice to see this updated, finally... Ewald/ED...can you guys please engage here on Uservoice more frequently....Please?

In seeing Brian's comment on his blog that team project rename is "nowhere near finished yet but the basic infrastructure enabling it is coming into being." I really hope you guys are going to be thinking through and delivering a complete "rename team project" feature.

And by complete I'm thinking:
1) Rename Team Project will update SSRS reports
2) Rename Team Project will update SharePoint
3) Rename Team Project will allow for historical querying of data to the old name (version control, builds, test plans, and most IMPORTANT the Cube)
4) Renamed Team Project will work for ALL editions of Visual Studio and (Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2015, and Team Explorer Everywhere)
5) Renamed Team Project will work for MSSCI and SQL SSMS
6) Renamed Team Project will not take the team project offline during the rename process (if we have people still checking in their checkins will live migrate to the new team project name...I DON'T want to have to have a DOWNTIME to rename a team project...we have builds that take days to run and I don't want to have to coordinate a downtime just make it work live live migrating a VM)
7) Renamed Team Project can be renamed multiple times...I like to change my mind and try new names and retry old names
8) Renamed Team Projects will work in Lab Management and allow for historical views of the data with the old name
9) Renamed Team Projects will work with Process Template customized fields and Global Lists.
10) Renamed Team Projects will work with API calls to the old team project name...we have build templates that look up the Team Project by name. Ensure the API handles calling the old team project name.
11) Renamed Team Projects will update the TFS Security Group names....all of the TFS Security Groups by default have the name in the string for example "ProjectAlpha Contributors" so I expect the rename feature to update the group names with the new name.
12) We have migrated VSS repositories to TFS and so renaming team projects better NOT break, VSS migrated repos. I don't want any Version Control labels/branches with the old team project name.
13) We have branched between team project source control projects..so the source control branches between team projects better work with the new names and update the descriptions text on the branches.
14) Team Project rename better be FAST. I should be able to click rename and have it take less than a second...like when I rename a folder in Windows.

You guys have had at least 4 years to build this feature...and these are the ideas that just come to mind off of the top of my head.

Build this feature RIGHT. Ship the feature all of us are asking for, for the past 4 years.